The only real candidate

www.commondreams.org...

I have a better shot at being the next President in Iraq than he does at being the D. Nominee.

True, but that doesn't change the fact that he is the best candidate.

As far as being a front runner that is another story.

Originally posted by Aliceinwonderland
True, but that doesn't change the fact that he is the best candidate.

As far as being a front runner that is another story.

What makes you think he is the best candidate???

So much for Kucinich......

www.worldnetdaily.com...

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich headlined a fund-raiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with ties to the Mideast terrorist organization Hamas and an agenda for an Islamic USA.

Any chance he did have has just been ruined by this little trip.

What makes you think he is the best candidate???

Depends on what you believe is an ideal candidate. If progressive is your thing look no further. He is the only true progressive. The rest of the candidates are just moderate republicans trying for the democratic nomination. I want an alternative to Bush, not just another watered down clone.

But then again I am a biased green party voter so it's just my opinion.

Originally posted by Aliceinwonderland

What makes you think he is the best candidate???

Depends on what you believe is an ideal candidate. If progressive is your thing look no further. He is the only true progressive. The rest of the candidates are just moderate republicans trying for the democratic nomination. I want an alternative to Bush, not just another watered down clone.

But then again I am a biased green party voter so it's just my opinion.

I would like to respectfully agree to disagree here. Kucinich is more of a centrist than Dean, Gephardt and Kerry IMO. Lieberman is about as close you can get to a wolf in sheeps clothing though. Kucinich is more about trying to make a policy that seperates himself from the rest of the crowd, hence his get troops out in 90 days stance. If you look at his past voting tendencies you will find that he is no more liberal than anyone in that crowd.

Wait , a Green party nominee will show up....

His ideas are too far left to be elected.

He will make a great Sec. of Welfare for Dr.Dean though.

Dean for America!!!

Beat BUSH!!!!!

He did a number on Cleveland as mayor. Some sort of poll rated him one of the worst mayors of all time. And, he has dropped his 'pro-life' stance he used to take and Clevelanders, largely Catholic, have noticed. I'd bet real money he won't come close getting the nomination. The 10th congressional district is wondering if he'd rather serve Cleveland, or Berkeley.

Yes I will agree with what has been said already. This guy is so far left he isolates himself from his party. He will not get the D ticket and would not be elected president if he were to run against Bush. He wanted immediate decriminalisation of drugs and the minute I heard him say that I already knew this guy was too progressive for 2003. Not going to happen, he's too ahead of his time.

I would vote for him if he was up against Bush , but only because I don't like the current setup and I'm progressive myself. This actually scares me a little bit. He is radical in comparison to the others and I think radical change is what this country needs to make more people happy. By even being up for the Democratic nomination it shows how close change is, although the timing doesn't seem right.

DEAN?! He's a republican. EDWARDS is where it's at.

I'm seeing how far left some of you really are, and I find it very scary.

Originally posted by Dreamz
So much for Kucinich......

www.worldnetdaily.com...

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich headlined a fund-raiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with ties to the Mideast terrorist organization Hamas and an agenda for an Islamic USA.

Any chance he did have has just been ruined by this little trip.

I don't think Kucinich is a radical Muslim bent on becomming the next Stalin. He is way left but more anarchist than authoritarian. He wants to decriminalize drugs and that probably doesnt sit well with his Islamic friends. Smuggling drugs carries the death penalty in Brunei and Malaysia, two highly Islamic nation states.

And the Muslims in Afghanistan?

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
And the Muslims in Afghanistan?

Grow flowers??

Shipping resin from poppies and trafficing meths, heroine and marijuana are two completely different things!

Damn it TC got me... No correlation between drugs and religion? Then Kucinich seems too liberal on his platform to allow an authoritarian regime to exert any influence.

CAIR came under fire in the last year as individuals associated with the organization were indicted on federal terrorism charges.

Since these charges are based on federal investigation, Kucinich may feel that there is some leeway in their law enforcement in the eyes of his supporters. Many of his supporters do not believe a thing the government says so his decision to attend really will have no effect on his outcome, expecially since it's pretty obvious he won't be president.

I have to say I like Dennis a little. He's a straight talker when it comes to IMF, World Bank, and WTO. He votes his conscience just like Mr. McCain. He's the only one of the candidates that voted against war in Iraq. He's the only candidate that's Anti-war. Voting against the war in Afghanistan too, and vowing to start a department of peace, which is a good thought but damn we already have too much government. I don't think we need a department to make peace, still he's committed to diplomacy and that's amazing post 9-11.

He would get my vote if he got the nomination. Right now, I don't think I'd vote for any of the other candidates, Clark maybe. Dean, I hate him. I just got a bad vibe from him, and he irrates me. If he gets the nod I'ma have to vote Bush, lesser of two evils.

Edwards, are you joking? He's a Ken doll blood sucking lawyer, and he constantly makes the same statements over and over again. It's like a he's on autopilot. He reminds me of Gore and not in a good way.

Bush, the lesser of two evils? Pass it this way, ok? I haven't had anything as obviously strong as what you're smokin' since I was in college.
Dean, a likely nomination at this point, though I feel JFK will be a stretch runner of merit, is not anywhere as bad as Bush.
Popularity voting is what has all those senior citizens of moderate income and Union workers screwed over right now....it got them a bumbling Bush.

If this guy becomes prez, then im the Queen of Monoco

never gonna happen

BT: Why do we like Dean? He's going to raise taxes on everybody to balance the budget. (Matter of fact they all are vowing to raise taxes which means not only am I paying a higher sales tax and higher property taxes, I won't even get the federal tax cut that caused my local taxes to sky rocket in the first place) Never mind that he stutters whenever he tries to make a witty come back which leads me to believe its coached comedy. I don't like him and I don't like taxes. Then what is his policy on the war on terror? He can't stop the war in Iraq and even if he could--he shouldn't because we don't have Saddam and the country isn't stable enough for us to leave, and Dean knows this. Only reason to put a dem in the white house is so that the courts don't turn this into a christian fundie nation. But, the dems have been able to block most of the judges.

On Bush: He's not going into Syria and Iran. They have NK under control. Yes, he went into Iraq. Yes, its a mess. But, we are fighting terror here, and I see what he's trying to do strategically. Democracy is the only thing that will end the strangle hold these fundies have on the Muslim population over there. They want democracy, they just don't know it yet . His policy sucks, but if in the end Iraq is free and Jordan follows and Palestine follows and Syria follows. We can save a lot of lives...Arabs and Americans. Bush lives on a street called hope. He hopes he's doing the right thing. I don't really like him much, but I have to like his idealism--that he actually thinks he can change the world for the better. Some in his administration have a different agenda I don't think he does. I think he wants democracy in the arab world. And, Palestine is a part of that. In his second term he'll make it happen for the good of us all.

I have to be honest. I'm leaning toward Bush in 04. Just leaning. It's still early.

LOL! Saphie, my love, you sound like a moderate republican manager friend of mine!

He thinks I'm nuts because I believe one usage of a nuclear weapon could solve our problems, currently and for the near future.

Originally posted by Saphronia
BT: Why do we like Dean? He's going to raise taxes on everybody to balance the budget. (Matter of fact they all are vowing to raise taxes which means not only am I paying a higher sales tax and higher property taxes, I won't even get the federal tax cut that caused my local taxes to sky rocket in the first place) Never mind that he stutters whenever he tries to make a witty come back which leads me to believe its coached comedy. I don't like him and I don't like taxes. Then what is his policy on the war on terror? He can't stop the war in Iraq and even if he could--he shouldn't because we don't have Saddam and the country isn't stable enough for us to leave, and Dean knows this. Only reason to put a dem in the white house is so that the courts don't turn this into a christian fundie nation. But, the dems have been able to block most of the judges.

On Bush: He's not going into Syria and Iran. They have NK under control. Yes, he went into Iraq. Yes, its a mess. But, we are fighting terror here, and I see what he's trying to do strategically. Democracy is the only thing that will end the strangle hold these fundies have on the Muslim population over there. They want democracy, they just don't know it yet

. His policy sucks, but if in the end Iraq is free and Jordan follows and Palestine follows and Syria follows. We can save a lot of lives...Arabs and Americans. Bush lives on a street called hope. He hopes he's doing the right thing. I don't really like him much, but I have to like his idealism--that he actually thinks he can change the world for the better. Some in his administration have a different agenda I don't think he does. I think he wants democracy in the arab world. And, Palestine is a part of that. In his second term he'll make it happen for the good of us all.

I have to be honest. I'm leaning toward Bush in 04. Just leaning. It's still early.

Well it won�t be the �Miseducation of Lauren Hill�, but it will be the education of Saphronia!
On Dean�s economic policies: Dean is not a Liberal. Dean is not a true Democrat. Dean is a Libertarian in Democrats clothing. The definition of a Libertarian is to be socially Liberal and fiscally Conservative.
We cannot have a strong economy and grow jobs when we are deficit spending like � a Drunken sailor� in the Bush model, where deficits are going to be steady in our lifetime.
Dean�who was the Lt. governor when Republican Gov. Richard Snelling died of a heart attack in 1991�stayed the course charted by Snelling during his subsequent five-term tenure � which was to balance the budget. When he became Gov., he added that �we will balance the budget... to meet long-term fiscal commitments to protect Medicare and Social Security and relieve future generations of the stifling burden of debt." As Dean has said many times on the campaign trail, 'You can't fund social justice in a deficit.'�
So you had the marriage of Republican tax cut fever, with Democrat social justice.
How did he do it?
At the time, Vermont's tax was a fixed 25 percent of the federal rate. Snelling proposed three rates�pegged on income�and then revoking those increases when the state retired its deficit. Dean not only followed through on that plan, but when returning to one fixed rate, Dean lowered the state income tax by 1 percent. Read that again: he cut taxes. from the book Howard Dean: A Citizen's Guide to the Man Who Would Be President (Steerforth Press, 2003): In the first term when Dean could put his own mark on the state budget, 1993 to 1994, Davis said Dean said no�across-the-boards�to state agency heads for funding increases. This was the last thing many Democrats in Vermont wanted or expected.
"Dean's approach was to accept the Snelling philosophy of tying state spending to the growth rate of the economy," Davis wrote. "But Dean, in practice, was far tougher on spending than Snelling ever was. Tom Pelham, who was Dean's budget chief for most of his tenure, says he and Dean calculated that the Snelling budget track was pitched too high by $100 million. So they determined to cut spending even more sharply than Snelling had contemplated." The result: in two years the state red ink was gone.
This fiscal conservatism extended to all areas in government except one: health care. When Dean became governor, prior state administrations laid the groundwork for what would become one of his biggest selling points in 2003, his expansion of state Medicaid and other social welfare programs to extend health care to children and young families.
On the �War on Terror�, there is has been zero effect or progress charted by the Bush team: Afghanistan is all tribal warlord & drug lord owned, the taliban has regrouped & is growing stronger, and the only area of �democracy� is in the capital city of Kabul. That too is also a joke, because there have been two attempts on the Afghani president & they�ve already killed the VP !!!!
In Iraq, we�ve killed thousands upon thousands of people. As much as half being non-combatants. The guerilla warfare I had predicted before this cluster# started is taking place. But, as they would have it spun, it�s not by foreign nationals sneaking into Iraq�.it�s by Iraqis.
�Them wanting democracy but not knowing it yet�? We�ve brought nothing of the sort: the Iraqi national Congress was picked in Washington, Paul Bremmer has shut down all the TV/Radio/Press outlets in the country, and there is zero concrete to any talk of the country, or it�s oil resources, being turned over to the Iraqi people within any defined time frame. Where the HELL are we being Democratic!?!?
The �idealism� that you say you admire in Bush is equivalent to a 16 yr old boy trying to get into his girlfriends pants: � I love you & will respect you� is what gets it done, but what does she have afterwards? He�s got the same bullshyte dripping from his lips that he had in 2000�.where are the realization of those ideals? And if you ascribe it to his handlers, what makes you think anything is going to change? Why would you even think that he lives on a street called �hope� if the PNAC plan, which was written by the people now running the country in 1998, is being implemented to the letter?
I agree that Bush thinks he can change the world for the better; just not for anybody else but the same folks from where he comes and who he serves.
Dean stutters? OK, but when was the last time you watched Bush in an unscripted speech? Dean has already spoken more in public ( GOP fundraisers don�t count) than Bush has his entire term.
There is allot more to a Dem president than to be a counter against Fundamentalist judges: the economy, our social well being/solvency and our wealth of culture/prosperity/honor. All of which have been squandered under Bush.